Alex Marks drains the remaining fuel out of Ryan Eversley's Acura following Pirelli World Challenge practice Friday April 7, 2017 at the 2017 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. (Photo by Will Lester/SCNG)

The crew of Ryan Eversley's Pirelli World Challenge team prepare to get to work on the Acura following practice Friday April 7, 2017 at the 2017 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. (Photo by Will Lester/SCNG)

Motor racing is supposed to be about glory and glamour. Television cameras, paparazzi, laurel wreaths, victory and champagne. Slide into a race car and drive flat-out for no more than three hours on a weekend to the checkered flag.

While Ryan Eversley extolled the virtues of his Acura NSX GT3 on Friday in the Pirelli World Challenge paddock inside the Long Beach Convention Center, his RealTime Racing crew toiled behind the 33-year old, preparing his car for Sunday’s 50-minute race as part of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

“I love my job; it’s the greatest sport to be in” RealTime team manager Nathan Bonneau said. “It takes competitiveness and a little bit of organization and you do not sit in front of a desk all day. My wife doesn’t necessarily like it all the time.

“But every time we cross the finish line and spray champagne, and everybody’s goal is to win a race, so I take that much satisfaction. We’re not in it for the money. We get more satisfaction taking the car from point A to point B.”

The World Challenge is one of racing’s most diverse series. Sports cars from 10 manufacturers will race for 50 minutes on Sunday morning in two classes; GT and GTA.

The cars have engines that essentially can be bought at the nearby dealership, be it the Acura, Ferrari, Cadillac, Porsche or Bentley.

Getting ready

RealTime, like most teams in the series, has two cars, driven by Eversley, from Atlanta, and Peter Kox, a 53-year-old from Holland.

The team is one of the most successful in the series. It has not won a series title since 2012, but owner Peter Cunningham has a series record 43 victories, 36 with this team. The 12 drivers for the 24-year-old team have won 88 races and 14 titles. Cunningham has won seven titles, including the last two for RealTime.

“Racing for them is a dream come true,” Eversley. “I am so impressed by them. I wasn’t sure they would accept me and the second race I got the pole and they believed in me.

“For me to come to them was pressure. These guys are not kidding around. They are here to win. I ave had a team with so many crew members who hang out as much as they do.”

Ten of the 16 crew members work in the team’s Saukville, Wisconsin shop, located north of Milwaukee and near Road America. Other members come from Denver, Vermont and Fullerton, flying to the race site. In addition, there are the half dozen engineers from Santa Clarita’s Honda Performance Development, which keeps the team’s new NSX engine running perfectly.

Long days

The crew was inside the back of the convention center at 8 a.m. on Friday, even though the day’s practice session did not start until the afternoon. The team finally left after 8 p.m. and will be back at it by 7 a.m. Saturday morning for practice and then qualifying.

“It is very standard for a race, any day we’re at the track to be here 12 hours,” said Jonny Reed, the car chief for Eversley. “If we get out before that, it’s a real good day. There are definitely days that we are here a lot longer than that.”

Friday morning, the team sent its cars through technical inspection and adjusted minor aspects. They adjusted the ride height sensor. They adjusted brakes, put on decals and wiped the car clean. HPD ran the cars with computers hooked up to find performance.

Practice not perfect

Bonneau, crew chief Mike Busalacchi and engineers Chris Willes and Colin Harmer sit atop the pit box all weekend. Five HPD engineers studied computers as Friday’s session progressed. Car chiefs Jonny Reed and Troy Wenzel stood just over the wall, waiting for the cars to come to the pits, listening to radio chatter between the box and drivers.

“It was small changes in the car and get it a little better for the morning,” Kox car chief Troy Wenzel said.

Both drivers both complained about understeer, when cars do not turn as well as the driver wants. Eversley ran the session’s 12th fastest time and Kox the 15th fastest time.

But that wasn’t the biggest problem. During Kox’s second stop, the air-powered automatic jack failed while the car was in the air. The front of the car nearly landed on Wenzel and mechanic Tony Strupp’s hand.

“We never had that happen and it could have got real bad,” Wenzel said. “I was under the front and Tony got his hand out just in time. It made it a little more difficult.”

After the session, crew members drained the fuel tank to determine fuel mileage, checked tire wear, worked on the car’s alignment and tried to resolve the jack and understeer issues. Bonneau and Busalacchi had long postrace discussions with Eversley and Kox.

It was a relatively uneventful day. But it could have been like last month’s season opener in St. Petersburg, Florida, where Eversley became good friends with the race wall.

“I often tell people a lot of our days are, if it’s the right time frame and stuff is not going well, like an ER after a bus accident,” car chief Reed said. “It is not that bad, but it’s nonstop. It’s crazy. Sometimes you work fast to barely make it to the next session. Lunch is an afterthought.”

Eversley said hitting the wall and tearing up the front of his car was a near-disaster.

“For me they give much that much more confidence,” the Honda factory driver said. “That is a big deal for a driver. You can push to the nth degree. There is nothing left to lose. So when something happens, they do not bat an eye. They say they will take it and fix it.”

Team game

In the racing world, especially on teams, the glamour and glory goes more often than not to the driver.

“It’s very exciting knowing all your hard work pays off,” said mechanic Pete Luiz, who lives in Fullerton and helps develop Hondas from the company’s American headquarters in Torrance when he is away from race weekends. “I think of the nights where we stay up rebuilding a car because somebody accidently put it into the wall or collected with another car. Then I think, well it’s not that bad. It’s energizing.

“The driver are usually, ‘See you tomorrow morning’ and they’re off to dinner while we’re scrambling for scraps and stuff. They understand what the crew goes through. They try to do stuff for us and tell you thank you.”

Experienced team

What might make this team the most special in the series is the crew’s devotion. Most of the crew has been with the team for at least a decade.

“We have a very good retention rate,” owner Cunningham said. “All the core people have been here a long time. If we have newer guys, if they made it for a month, there still here. We have a very special group. We’re not one big happy family all of the time, but we have really goods guys who work together and respect each other.”

Reed and James Pauly worked for IndyCar teams. Strupp was in Rally America.

“The last 10 years most of our guys have all stayed here and that makes our team a lot of stronger,” Bonneau said. “Peter’s a great owner and takes great care of us. At RealTime we not only work on cars, we can build cars.”

IndyCar teams might have more crew members, but mechanics such as Luiz can switch from working on Kox’s car to working with Eversley’s team.

“We have not one role here,” Bonneau said. “It’s a combined effort of everybody. It’s not like IndyCar where one guy works on the gearbox and that’s all he does.

Eversley, who has three wins with the team, said his victories are not just his, but for everyone on the team.

“I have so much respect for these guys and I think it’s a mutual thing because they know I’m willing to lend a hand and that goes a long way, “Eversley said. “We win together and lose together.”

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